How wast thou not afraid? — David now turns to the Amalekite. It does not matter whether he fully believed his story or not, the man must be judged by his own account of himself. (See 2 Samuel 1:16.) Regicide was not in David’s eyes merely a political crime; he had showed on more than one occasion of great temptation (1 Samuel 24:6; 1 Samuel 26:9; 1 Samuel 26:11; 1 Samuel 26:16) that he considered taking the life of “the Lord’s anointed” as a religious offence of the greatest magnitude. It was an especially grievous thing for a foreigner and an Amalekite thus to smite him whom God had appointed as the monarch of Israel.

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